d go away for three-quarters
of a year, and once more the marquise found herself widowed. Whatever
contemporary account one may consult, one finds them all agreeing to
declare that she was always the same--that is to say, full of patience,
calmness, and becoming behaviour--and it is rare to find such a unanimity
of opinion about a young and beautiful woman.

About this time the marquis, finding it unendurable to be alone with his
wife during the short spaces of time which he spent at home, invited his
two brothers, the chevalier and the abbe de Ganges, to come and live with
him. He had a third brother, who, as the second son, bore the title of
comte, and who was colonel of the Languedoc regiment, but as this
gentleman played no part in this story we shall not concern ourselves
with him.

The abbe de Ganges, who bore that title without belonging to the Church,
had assumed it in order to enjoy its privileges: he was a kind of wit,
writing madrigals and 'bouts-rimes' [Bouts-rimes are verses written to a
given set of rhymes.] on occasion, a handsome man enough, though in
moments of impatience his eyes would take a strangely cruel expression;
as dissolute and shameless to boot, as though he had really belonged to
the clergy of the period.

The chevalier de Ganges, who shared in some measure the beauty so
profusely showered upon the family, was one of those feeble men who enjoy
their own nullity, and grow on to old age inapt alike for good and evil,
unless some nature of a stronger stamp lays hold on them and drags them
like faint and pallid satellites in its wake. This was what befell the
chevalier in respect of his brother: submitted to an influence of which
he himself was not aware, and against which, had he but suspected it, he
would have rebelled with the obstinacy of a child, he was a machine
obedient to the will of another mind and to the passions of another
heart, a machine which was all the more terrible in that no movement of
instinct or of reason could, in his case, arrest the impulse given.

Moreover, this influence which the abbe had acquired over the chevalier
extended, in some degree also, to the marquis. Having as a younger son
no fortune, having no revenue, for though he wore a Churchman's robes he
did not fulfil a Churchman's functions, he had succeeded in persuading
the marquis, who was rich, not only in the enjoyment of his own fortune,
but also in that of his wife, which was likely to be nearly dou